Two of Rick's smaller eyes opened and then all the others followed.
“Good morning,” Max said.
“Healthy awakenings,” Rick returned.
“Query. Did you happen to fix any swelling and bruising while I was asleep?”
“Beds contain medical facilities equivalent to the lower lab.” Rick touched the overhead controls, and alien script filled the screen. “Technology remove toxins and reduced blood pooling at site of injury.”
That sounded like a cure for bruising. Technology for the win.
“The window of Max's eye has returned to normal,” Rick said.
“Correction. The pupil of my eye is not dilated.” It had never occurred to Max that Rick could read his emotional state as easily as Max could track those curling tentacles. Max had never yelled or panicked, yet Rick had known. He had taken one look at the “window” of Max's eye and known how much Max feared going home. “I still need to send them a message. I don't want them afraid.”
Rick was silent for a time. “I can move ship close enough to transmit sound. Query. Will they listen?”
“I think they have every bit of technology they own pointed at the skies to listen. But even if they aren’t listening, I have to try.”
“Acceptable,” Rick agreed. “I do not hope for fear in humans. I like humans.”
“Unfortunately, humans would probably be afraid of you. You have too many limbs.” Max had pretty well let the cat out of the bag, so he didn't feel any need to hide the worst of humanity.
“To evaluate on appearance is common.”
Max huffed. He knew Rick was trying to make him feel better, but Max was more than a little embarrassed to have come from a planet where someone as kind as Rick would be dismissed as a monster.
“Others evaluate the people as undesirable for lack of symmetry. Humans are much symmetry more.” Rick ran a tentacle over Max's forehead and then down his nose.
“My symmetry is superficial. Inside, I am not symmetrical,” Max pointed out.
“This I know. This others know. But humans’ exterior appearance symmetrical. Others find symmetry pleasing.”
“And how do you find symmetry?” Max asked. “That was a query.”
Rick pulled more tentacles out from under his body and draped several over Max’s stomach. “Symmetry is predictable. It lacks surprise or element to inspire exploration.”
Max supplied the word Rick struggled to express. “Boring. You find symmetry boring.” That did make some sense. Every time Rick turned his head, a whole new pattern of eyes and colors appeared. From a distance, he appeared light green, but up close, Rick’s skin had streaks of greens and beiges. And then the undersides and ends of the tentacles were vivid reds and oranges. If someone took a hundred pictures of Rick, no two would look the same. There was a lot to explore.
“Max is not boring,” Rick said. He wrapped his tentacles around Max’s middle and squeezed.
“I am symmetrical, at least externally.”
“But internally asymmetrical. Rick rested a tentacle on his lower stomach. “Internally, Max is random and unpredictable.”
Max narrowed his eyes. “Are you saying you find my intestines attractive?” Of all the pickup lines. Max had gotten in his life, and he had gotten a lot, that was the oddest.
“Yes.”
“You’re the weird one.”
Rick shimmied. “Max is unpredictable with actions. He is warrior who will surrogate. He is father who will claim genetic otherness as his own.” Rick stretched, and his tentacle brushed over Max's half hard cock. Immediately, Rick froze, his tentacle still pressing Max's genitals, and alien pants were not nearly thick enough to hide what was going on. “Query. Would you tangle tentacles?”
Max was bordering on desperate to have sex, and his cock was getting harder by the second. However, he knew better than to crap where he ate. At least he did now. As a teen and even a young man in his early twenties, he had slept with too many people he worked with or had class with. It had made for some awkward morning-afters. “Tangling tentacles can make it difficult for me to leave. You said your people never stay, that you swim away.”
“Children must leave a parent. To stay with a parent is to remain in stagnant water.”
“Well, humans like water which does not move,” Max said. “If we tangle tentacles, I’ll want the waters to not move, so it’s best if we don’t get tangled.” Max rolled away from Rick.
